


should i walk by again?

by sincerelysamedt



Series: commission pieces [1]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Bakery and Flower Shop, Branding, Flirting, M/M, Meeting Someone Halfway, Mutual Pining, Other, is this how angels and demons would flirt?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26415085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sincerelysamedt/pseuds/sincerelysamedt
Summary: “You're not even supposed tobehere."Gon tilts his head to one side."Why not? Heaven doesn'townEarth."A visit, long overdue.
Relationships: Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck
Series: commission pieces [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920013
Comments: 17
Kudos: 98





	should i walk by again?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [telrxnya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/telrxnya/gifts).



> A commission piece for the darling [@telehxhtrash](https://telehxhtrash.tumblr.com/). Thank you so much for commissioning me and I'm glad you enjoyed the preview~
> 
> Please check out her gorgeous metas, art, and analyses!
> 
> The title is from "Love At First Sight" by The Brobecks.

With a flick of his pinky, the sign on the door flips from **YES, WE ARE OPEN** to **SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED** , snapping the lock along with it. It's early, much earlier than he usually closes the shop, sunlight still streaming in. Alluka will most definitely ask him all the pointed questions she raised her eyebrows at him when he gave her the rest of the day off. He kind of hopes Nanika will come out to play during Alluka's shift tomorrow. That girl is much sweeter and less likely to pry into his business than her counterpart.

As he places a slice of coconut cream pie on a plate, he sets aside a cinnamon bun for Nanika in one of the shop's takeout bags. The only reason he slides in a lemon-orange tart, too, is because he can already envision Nanika's quivering pout if Alluka didn't have breakfast put away for her as well. Those girls are so _tiny,_ what the hell are their parents feeding them.

He grates a little bit of dark chocolate atop the pie's toasted meringue and carries the entire plate along with a fresh pot of coffee to the patron sitting by the window.

"Can I top you off?" He asks, already filling in the patron's half-empty mug and putting down the plate before the patron can respond.

The patron tips his hat down lower, covering his eyes and most of his face as he pushes the plate away.

"I'm sorry. I didn't order this."

Killua pushes it back.

"It's on the house." He smiles, his _customer service worker_ smile as Alluka had put it, pinched at the corners and toothless. A step away from stabbing someone in the throat with a fork instead of slipping it carefully in their hand with a folded napkin.

The patron wisely takes the offered fork with his hand instead of his neck and breaks off a piece of pie.

"I don't think I've seen you around here before." Killua says lightly, still standing at the patron's tableside, watching him eat under the brim of his hat. A fedora. Tasteless but at least it isn't straw. Killua is a shopkeeper, not a fishmonger.

"I'm new here." Is what Killua understands from the patron's gurgling answer. He sighs a little at the specks of cream and crust that fly out of the patron's full mouth, landing onto the table.

What a mess. The patron gulps down his coffee and Killua pours him more.

"Just moved in."

"Oh, you mean the storefront around the corner?" It's cozy space, open floors, high walls, a nice location with a lot of foot traffic. Killua had looked into the same property about eighty or ninety years ago before settling down in what is now known as his family's bakeshop. In that time, the corner storefront has been a martials arts studio, a tattoo parlor, a bookstore, and a medical clinic. All very successful enterprises run by lovely people who sold off their businesses in their golden years and retired somewhere in the countryside. Picture-perfect fairytales, every last one. Blessed. Almost _miraculous_ even.

"Yeah! That's the one!" The patron still won't look at him, seemingly content in finding and shapes and patterns in the leftover smears of melted meringue on his plate, but Killua can feel his enthusiasm, his excitement, a budding sapling of passion for a novel venture, a new endeavor, a conquest, a _project_. It radiates from the patron, as much as he hides his face and eyes, hunches low in his coat and makes himself small when such _love_ can never be quite concealed even if Killua wasn't a Principality especially attuned to such _effervescence._

"But that's not the only reason why I'm here."

“Really now?" Killua takes out a small spray bottle of soapy water from his pocket and wipes down the patron's table.

"Really."

The patron nods. Killua drags his soapy rag over the surface of the table once, twice, five times for good measure.

"I'm waiting for someone."

"You don't say."

"Someone I haven't seen in a long time." Was that crack always there? Is that dirt or mold? Can't be, not in his bakery. Discoloration from the wood? He could paint it over.

"Last I heard, he lives around here." A fresh coat of white. Maybe blue, just to change things up. Won't even use a miracle for it.

"I don't think he wants to see me, though." No, pink.

"I think he's even avoiding me." Bright, vibrant _magenta._

"He keeps on running away." Alluka would like it but it would clash horribly with the walls.

"But I'm willing to wait."

Paint the walls, then.

"I'd wait for an eternity if it was for him."

All of them. Even the ceiling. Chartreuse. Emerald. Gree-

A hand wraps around his wrist. It's rougher than expected. _Where have you been, what have you been doing?_ He drops the rag.

"Would you keep me company until then?"

 _Gold._ He'll paint the tables gold.

"I have a shop to run." Killua says, far too soft, a deflating souffle melting at the barest poke, the slightest breath, don't speak too loud don't raise your voice set it down gently _please._

"No one's been here all day, _'ānela."_ Gon _finally_ takes off that ridiculous hat. Nearly one hundred years and he couldn't even be bothered to change his hairstyle.

"How did you find me?" Killua asks, not surprised but more than a bit helpless.

Gon taps at his nose.

"Not very hard."

Of course. Gon would have found him eventually, whether it took him a decade or a century, tracking him down by the ozone melded in his corporeal form and the crackle of miracles in his wake.

“You're not even supposed to _be_ here."

Gon tilts his head to one side.

"Why not? Heaven doesn't _own_ Earth."

It's a nice day. Summery, sunlit, clouds forming candied swirls. The slow swipe of Gon's occult claws on his nonexistent pulse shouldn't make him crumble like a macaron left in open air.

"I just wanted to catch up with an old friend, will Up There fault me for that?" Mortal fingernails edge past the jutted bone of his wrist, sneaking into the space left between his light cardigan and the flesh of the body he inhabits. Corporeal forms require air but Killua is ether and the ethereal do not need to breathe. Hungrily, he sucks on an inhale.

"What are you doing?" Icing-sugar fragile, melting in water vapor.

Gon simply hums, drawing sigils on Killua's gossamer skin, so thin and delicate it singes straight through into silver blood. The tip of a star, the curve of a circle, Latin and Greek and the little island languages Gon has always been so fond of.

"I told you. I'm waiting for someone and I'll wait for as long as he wants me to."

He's tempted to brace himself on the table, pour the weight of his physical form somewhere that isn't Gon's touch on his inner wrist, following an ocean-bluegreen vein up up _up_ his arm, slowly baring his vulnerable pulse to the chilly morning air. Gon could poke through him right there, spill silver and lightning on his clean floors.

He could smite Gon right now, watch divine retribution douse smelted gold, tempered chocolate. Gon's palm sweeps along the path his thumb had forged, pushing Killua's sleeve to the elbow.

"What if he keeps you waiting forever?"

Sunlit he is, island-hopping and deep-diving in the lifetime between this moment and the World Tree, Killua is reminded that brimstone lines the inside of Gon's smile when the quick press of lips to the meat of his upturned hand leaves a strawberry-syrup brand.

"I have you keeping me company, don't I?"

The burn tickles. If he peels back his skin right now, he'd find an imprint of the kiss on the wet of his bones.

"Thank you for the meal, _'ānela_." Gon smiles as if he hasn't done anything _grossly inappropriate,_ putting his tacky, tasteless hat back on and picking up the same green-orange coat a childless islander woman had sewn for him back in the decade before the last century. She found her cousin eventually, if he remembers correctly, shacked up with the adopted son of an eccentric politician.

He wonders if she regretted getting exactly what she wanted, if it felt like not knowing where to go next, sunburn after a day on the shore. If she's still as deeply infatuated with the fortune teller she stumbles upon on the boat back home.

"You should come by the nursery when it's done. I'll give you a tour.” The little bell over the door rings when Gon swings it open. "In exchange for the food."

Detours, near misses, the destinations at the end of a thrice-around-the-world journey. Was it worth it?

"Wait."

It's not far. It's not far at all.

"I'd love that." Killua says when he pulls away, cornflower-iris blue bruise on Gon's cheek a matching halve to the brand on Killua's palm. Put them together and make them whole. 

Gon remains gargoyle-still on Killua's doorstep. Did he forget what makes an angel's breath? It hasn't been that long.

"You better go back to your shop. I can't visit if it's not open."

Ripe, fresh strawberries, pluckable on the tips of Gon's corporeal ears, a lovely hill to climb on a nice, summery day.

"R-Right! Yeah, of course, I- I'll show you around."

Killua tries not to show his teeth. Pinched at the corners, behind the lips, what could be holier, more banal, than the dew on the fangs of an angel?

"It's a flower shop." Gon whispers, a point of white tracked in the center of gold.

"A flower shop."

"Yes, a flower shop."

"It sounds nice."

"It will be. I hope you'll like it."

"I'm sure I will."

People weave around Gon, turn their backs to him and walk in the gutter by the roads to get by. The storefront isn't far, at the end of the street make a left, it's right there, you can't miss it, you'll never miss it, it's right there.

It's not far.

Killua takes one step back in, two. If he doesn't, they could stay on that doorstep for the entire afternoon, branded and bruised, brimstone and morning dew, people passing by and by again without stalling, until the streetlights come on and off and on and off and on and off again and again. Someone has to.

"I hope you won't have to wait long." Killua says, slowly closing the door, _leave a crack open, leave a crack open, he's still there, still standing, you can see him through the glass._

Fingers wedge between the door and door frame, occult, matterless claws barely grazing the tip of his nose.

"I don't mind, Killua. _"_ Gon breathes sugar and brimstone, sweet and burning like incense on the tongue. _I'm sorry I met you one way then never came again._

 _"_ Take all the time you need." A little force on the door, enough to widen the gap, put half a foot back in. Claws scratch the nice cream paint on the door's wood. He'll have to repaint it. He might not.

Gently, he lays his fingers over Gon's, prying him off. Gon makes a sound like he's been wounded, which is ridiculous. The pain these corporeal forms can experience is far below the threshold they both endure. To injure Gon enough to whimper would be to discorporate him instantly. There is nothing divine under Killua's fingernails.

"It's not far." He tells him. Down the street. Make a left. You can't miss it. Not ever. A garden in a storefront.

He won't miss it.

"I'll bring more pie, I promise."

**Author's Note:**

> 'Ānela is "angel" in Hawaiian.


End file.
